workingclasshistory:

On this day, 16 October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown and his followers raided a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, with the intention of using the weapons to arm slaves. Seven were killed in the raid and ten were injured. Brown himself would later be captured and tried for treason. Brown became a committed abolitionist at the age of twelve after he witnessed a man brutally beating a young slave boy with an iron shovel. Brown later wrote that the experience transformed him into “a most determined abolitionist…leading him to declare, or swear, eternal war with slavery.” More info in this chapter by Howard Zinn on resistance to slavery: https://ift.tt/2LaluWB https://ift.tt/2NPeTlS